The Luna He Rejected: An Alpha's Regret

CHAPTER 25

Seraphine’s POV

We walked back to the car in silence.

It wasn’t the peaceful kind of quiet. This silence felt heavy, thick enough to choke on. The only sounds were our footsteps on the gravel path and the distant crash of waves against the harbor. Caden walked beside me, but there was space between us. Actual physical distance. Something that had been building since my father mentioned the recording.

I kept replaying Kofi’s words in my head.

A recording of Caden dismissing his bond with Sera as a political inconvenience.

That was four years ago.

The same year I had been trying so hard to make our marriage work. The same year I had been slowly breaking under the weight of being ignored and pushed aside.

When we reached the car, I didn’t get in right away. I turned to face him under the dim streetlight. My voice came out quieter than I expected, but steady.

“Is it true?”

Caden didn’t look away. He didn’t try to soften it or make excuses first. He just met my eyes and nodded once.

“Yes.”

The word landed like a stone in my chest.

I had known it probably was. But hearing him admit it out loud still hurt more than I wanted it to. I swallowed and forced myself to keep going.

“What exactly did you say?”

He exhaled slowly, like the memory itself was painful to touch. “It was right after we were bonded. At a council meeting. The elders were questioning whether a half-blood Luna could properly support an Alpha. They were pushing me on whether I was willing to set the bond aside if it became… inconvenient for the pack.”

His jaw tightened.

“I told them the bond was a political arrangement. That I would treat it as such. That I wouldn’t let personal feelings interfere with my duty to Ironmoor.”

He paused, then added quietly, “I said the Moon Goddess’s choice didn’t change the fact that I had responsibilities that came first.”

I closed my eyes for a second.

I remembered those early months. How hard I had tried. How many times I had convinced myself that if I just worked harder, cooked better, organized the packhouse more efficiently, maybe he would see

And the whole time, he had been saying things like that behind closed doors.

When I opened my eyes again, Caden was still watching me. There was no defense in his expression.

“I was terrified,” he said. “Of what I was feeling. Of how much the bond was already pulling at me. Every man in that room had been raised to believe that softness in an Alpha was dangerous. That caring too much about your mate made you weak. I had spent my whole life learning how to wear that mask. So I wore it harder.”

He took a small step closer, but didn’t reach for me.

“I was a coward, Sera. I chose the version of myself that felt safe over the version that might have been real. I’m not that man anymore. I haven’t been for a long time. But I can’t erase what I said back then.”

I studied his face in the low light. He looked tired. Not just from the long night, but from carrying the weight of his past mistakes. There was something in his eyes I hadn’t seen in years, genuine regret that wasn’t wrapped in pride or excuses.

I took a slow breath.

“You need to get ahead of this,” I said. “Isolde is going to use that recording. She’ll twist it. She’ll make it sound like you never cared about me at all. If you wait for her to release it, she controls the story.”

Caden nodded. “I know.”

“Then you should tell the pack yourself,” I continued. “Before she can. Stand in front of them and own what you said. Tell them why you said it. Tell them you were wrong.”

We stood there for another few seconds, the night air cool against my skin. For a brief, fragile moment, it almost felt like we were finding some kind of middle ground.

Caden looked at me, his expression serious.

“Stand with me tomorrow,” he said. “When I face the council. I’m going to tell them everything myself before Isolde can twist it. I want you there.”

The request hung between us.

I wanted to say yes. Part of me did. But the larger part of me — the part that had spent four years rebuilding herself alone — held back. We were already living under the same roof again in Ironmoor. We were already navigating shared space and shared children. Standing beside him in front of the entire council felt like a much bigger step. One I wasn’t ready to take yet, especially with the current circumstances,

I shook my head slowly. “You haven’t earned that yet, Caden.”

He didn’t argue or try to push his case, he just accepted it with a small nod, though I could see the disappointment in his eyes.

“I understand,” he said quietly.

We stood there in silence for a moment longer. The weight of everything that had happened tonight sat heavily between us. We were making progress slowly, but it was still progress.

Then Caden’s phone rang.

He pulled it out and glanced at the screen. “Marcus.”

He answered and put it on speaker.

Marcus’s voice came through immediately, tight and urgent. “Caden. Isolde didn’t wait. She leaked the recording.”

My stomach dropped.

“Both of them,” Marcus continued. “She released the one of you in the council chamber… and another one. It’s of Seraphine. From the day she signed the divorce papers. She’s screaming that she curses the day the Moon Goddess ever linked your lives together.”

The words hit me like a physical blow.

I remembered that moment clearly. I remembered the rage and heartbreak that had poured out of me in Caden’s office that day. I had been so angry, so broken, that I hadn’t cared who heard me. I hadn’t known anyone was recording.

Caden’s face went pale under the streetlight.

Marcus kept going. “It’s already spreading through every pack channel. People are sharing it. Commenting. It’s everywhere.”

I felt sick.

Our private pain, the worst moments of our marriage, was now public. Every wolf in Ironmoor, every elder, every person who had ever judged me for leaving, now had front-row seats to our lowest points.

Caden ended the call without another word.

We stood there on the dark road, the sound of the waves suddenly too loud in my ears. The fragile thread of understanding we had just started to build felt like it had been ripped apart.

This was no longer just about legal battles or custody.

Isolde had turned our marriage into a public execution.

And the entire pack was now watching.